Day: February 6, 2011

For some reason I thought of Hugo Flesch yesterday, who wrote amusing filler items for the Village Voice back in the '80s. Filler is an odd vestige of the print era, before computerized typesetting, when gaps appeared in the final newspaper page layout that had to be filled with classifieds or random bits of text. Flesch, who also wrote for the National Lampoon, turned deadpan, absurdist filler items into his special art. A quick Googling revealed no cult of Hugo, but I found a PDF of his college newspaper, which showed him writing filler before he even graduated! Above is a screenshot from the Stony Brook paper.

Update: In case it needs mentioning: Lou Grant doesn't exist, he is a TV character played by Ed Asner.